Kayte Nunn takes readers to Italy in her latest mystery

WITH a background as a travel writer, it’s little surprise that Kayte Nunn chooses to set her murder mysteries in evocative locations around the world. Her latest novel, The Palazzo, is no exception.

Filled with envy watching friends travelling to Europe for their summer holidays at a time she was unable to travel, she did the next best thing and went there in her imagination.

“I had thought about setting a historical novel in northern Italy, focusing on the staffette (Parisian couriers) of the Italian Resistance during World War II, but I put that idea aside, only returning to it for the setting of The Palazzo,” she says. “Stella, the old woman in The Palazzo, was originally a young girl in my historical idea.”

Based in the hinterland near Alstonville, Nunn worked as a features writer and was formerly editor of Gourmet Traveller WINE before transitioning to fiction.

 

“It had always been a dream, but one that I barely admitted to myself, but then it became a case of ‘now or never’ and I discovered how much I love the feeling of writing fiction,” she says.

Since then, she has published eight novels, including The Botanist’s Daughter, which has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. The book won the 2020 Winston Graham Historical Fiction Prize and was selected as the National English Honor Society’s Common Reader for 2024.

While many of her previous works have included crime or mystery elements, The Palazzo places the murder at the heart of the narrative. The novel closely examines the suspects and their relationships, with a timeline that spans just one intense week.

“It delves far more deeply into character and motivation than my previous work, and the action takes place over only a week,” she says.

 

“I love stories where mystery, character and location combine to create a fascinating, unputdownable, page-turning story,” she says.

Nunn’s next novel, slated for release in mid-2026, is set aboard a luxury superyacht sailing around Spain’s Balearic Islands.

She will launch The Palazzo at The Book Room in Byron Bay on July 10 at 6pm.

Nunn is also appearing on the Murder Mysteries panel at the Byron Writers Festival on Friday August 8 at 12.45pm, alongside fellow local author, The Sunbaker’s PA Thomas.